


never dare

by killkissbe



Category: Arrival (2016)
Genre: Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, spoilers everywhere, very short drabbles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-08-31 08:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8571586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killkissbe/pseuds/killkissbe
Summary: A series of one-shots inspired by the film and the short story: The Story of Your Life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enigma731](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/gifts).
  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Never Dare](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10579047) by [DaintyCrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaintyCrow/pseuds/DaintyCrow)



> “If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.” – Margaret Atwood

Your father will ask if I've ever tried to fix it, to change your future, and I'll spend what feels like a million minutes explaining why I can't.

He'll leave anyway.

But there will be times when I do try to change things. When I ask doctors more questions than the regular paranoid mom, when I ask for tests I shouldn't know the names of. I'll examine at bruises on your legs even when you insist you simply fell, because there is nothing simple about our lives and what will happen to you. To us.

I'll know in my head that the future is set, that I will lose you, but that doesn't mean there aren't times when my heart doesn't intervene and beg everything within me to try and save you.

I will know you cannot be saved and try anyway, because though I have been gifted the language and knowledge of the Heptapods, I will always be your mother.


	2. Chapter 2

There will be times I have wonder whether falling in love with your father will feel empty without anticipation, but I never experience that. Uncertainty and expectation are overridden by contentment. Contentment in the knowledge we will always be connected, he and I, because of you. 

Even when you are gone. 

There will be moments when his hand falls to rest on my arm and though I see it coming, as I see everything, I still feel goosebumps on my bare skin. Maybe because I did see it coming, or maybe because in that same moment I also feel his hand resting on the small of my back as we watch your coffin lower into broken ground.

I will love your father as I loved you. As I will always love you. In spite of and because, all at once, as everything will always be because of them and what they taught me.


	3. Chapter 3

One day we will be shopping as mothers and daughters do, and we'll pass a baby clothing store where you'll pick up a pink tutu and say one day, I better buy that for my granddaughter. 

You'll laugh as my eyes slam shut and my pulse quickens, promising you won't be pregnant anytime soon. 

I'll promise I'm just feeling lightheaded, and that part's true. What you won't ever know is that I'm practicing how to breathe without you.


End file.
